Zola Jesus - Taiga

Zola Jesus undoubtedly has her disciples who will excuse her artistic pretensions, but Taiga is an album so given to insipid club-beats and vocal processing, that I couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough for a last purge of anything ‘club classic’ in my house collection. For my sins, I have to cop this fist-pumping euro-trash excess one last time. Like a good spring cleanout, I can thank Zola Jesus for the opportunity to once and for all remove any reference to Creamfields in my study.

What’s going on with record labels these days? I thought a Mute release was a guarantee of something at least aspiring to be a market-leading independent release, but if this had been launched on Global Underground under the cloak of tasteful DJ remixology, I would have been the last one surprised. Perhaps that was the aspiration.

I anticipate a possible backlash from fans, but perhaps in their denunciations they can point out the distinction between Taiga and any other club crossover with a ‘heavy baggage’ sticker destined for a Spanish island.